Layered Drinks

Holy shit. You go away for a couple of decades and they change everything.

In any case, here we are, and as promised, here is how you mix layered drinks:

1. Either find a recipe or build one of your own, consulting a chart like this to ensure that the liquors you want to layer have different enough densities that they actually WILL layer without being an utter pain in the ass. It’s supposedly possible to layer liquors with the same density, but it’s very difficult. Write your recipe down in order of density so you don’t have to keep running back to the chart.

2. Now, gather up the liquor and find yourself a glass. The wider the top, the better. You have to fit a teaspoon or bar spoon in there.

3. Okay, so consult that shiny chart again to see which liquor is the heaviest. That’s the one we’ll start with.

4a.There are a couple of ways to layer drinks. One is using a bar spoon, holding the scoopy bit of the spoon in your hand and pouring the liquor down the handle with the end of the handle inside the glass so that the liquor runs slowly down that twisty handle to keep the likely hood of breaking the surface tension when it meets the other liquor down. However, realizing not everyone HAS a bar spoon, we’ll use the “back of spoon” method.The other way can be found here.

4b. Take your spoon and put the scoopy bit convex side up in the glass, just above the bottom. Steadily pour the heaviest liquor over the back of the spoon so it spreads out and makes a nice even layer in the bottom, moving up as the level of the layer rises so the spoon doesn’t break the surface. Technically it probably isn’t necessary to pour the bottom layer, but it makes for good practice for the other layers.

5. Now, to avoid mixing the alcohols and messing up your efforts, wipe off the spoon. Again, not strictly necessary, but makes good sense to me. I’m a neat freak with food.

6. Check the chart to find the second densest liquor and repeat the above trick with the spoon, pouring slowly over the back so that you don’t break the surface tension of the bottom layer. Do it correctly and you’ll find this layer should float mysteriously above the bottom one, content to exist as its own entity rather than getting all chummy with the other liquor.

7. Continue the pattern until the drink is complete, keeping in mind that the thinner the layer, the easier it will be to break.

There you have it, how to make drinks so fancy the liquors snobbishly refuse to associate with one another, just in time for the holidays so you can impress everyone on New Years and knock back your failed experiments during Christmas so you can cope with your family.